When Magic Dares

by Tera Lynn Childs

  Then they received notice that Callie had been seen heading into the White Mountains.

  The next day the curse fell over the kingdom.

  It had all happened so quickly. So many tragedies in short succession—losing her mother, her sister, and her father, all in one chain of events. Arianne had been bitter, angry, furious at her selfish sister for leaving her so utterly alone and for the curse that came after. She had never once stopped to think of things from her sister’s perspective.

  How alone Callie must have felt. Without even a palace and a clan to stand beside her.

  While Arianne had been resenting her own fate, Callie’s had been even worse.

  No wonder she lashed out, no wonder she conjured the curse. Arianne was surprised her sister hadn’t just wiped out the entire clan that, from her young point of view, had deserted her.

  And, in truth, they had.

  “I’ll find him, Callie,” Arianne said, pushing away from Tearloch and grasping her sisters hands. “I’ll bring him back, and you can be free. Just tell me where.”

  Callie gave her a watery smile. “I can do better than that.” The skin where their palms met began to tingle. “I can send you to him.”

  Arianne smiled.

  “When you are ready,” Callie said, “call my name.”

  Then, in a flash, the glade was gone.

  Chapter 14

  Tearloch had his hand around the witch’s neck before she could blink.

  “Where is Arianne?” he demanded. “Where did you send her?”

  She lifted her hands, made a small gesture, and suddenly he was floating above her.

  “Fret not, warrior,” she said in a tone that did not reassure him at all. “She is safe.”

  He gave up his struggle, realizing the futility of fighting the air. And in truth, the witch had done nothing to indicated she wished to harm her sister. He had to believe that the princess was, indeed, safe.

  As soon as he relaxed, she lowered him back to the ground.

  “Do you call all royal princesses by their given names?” the witch asked.

  Tearloch frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Where is Arianne?” she asked, mimicking his voice. “Not Princess or her highness. Arianne.”

  He clenched his jaw.

  “You care for her,” the witch said, turning and walking away from him like she had no care in the world.

  As the distance between them grew, he called out, “So do you!”

  She laughed. But kept walking.

  He had the strangest sensation that a sort of peace had been declared between them. This half-fae witch was not the monster he had long believed her to be. She was, in truth, a lost girl who had perhaps finally been found.

  His chest filled with pride at the thought that he had played a part in finding her.

  Chapter 15

  For several seconds, Arianne was blinded by the flash of light from Callie’s magic. Disoriented, she closed her eyes until the sparks faded. When she opened them again, she found herself standing in front of a rugged thatch-roofed building. No windows broke up the facade. Only a large black door, with a roughly carved bird in the center. A slightly more refined sign hung next to the door, proclaiming this establishment to be the Black Dove.

  “A tavern?” she whispered.

  There were no signs of life from within—no sounds echoing through the door, no light slipping through the cracks. It looked as if it had been out of operation for quite some time.

  She glanced around. No other buildings were anywhere in sight. The Black Dove was situated deep in the middle of a dense forest.

  There was not even a path that she could make out. Whoever visited here did not wish to be found.

  Had Drustan fled here in his madness?

  She reached for the door handle. Her hands shook. Either out of fear that he would not be discovered within or excitement that he would.

  Her father, found. After all these years. Was it even possible?

  In a moment she would know.

  Arianne pushed open the tavern door.

  What had looked from the outside to be an abandoned building blared instantly to life. Sound washed over her. Voices. Laughter. Music. Clinking mugs and clattering plates.

  The Black Dove was very clearly still in business. And her patrons had taken a sudden interest in the new arrival. Some turned to stare at her, while others glanced at her askance. Still others did not have to turn for Arianne to know their other senses were keenly tuned on her.

  She had no idea where in the veil Callie had sent her. She had never heard of the Black Dove. It could easily have been located within the territory of an enemy clan—and one far more powerful than the Moraine. If she had landed in the realm of the Arghail or, worse, the Roghann, the situation could be dangerous.

  When none immediately leapt to their feet and cried enemy in their midst, she let out a breath. Her vision cleared and she saw, across the crowded tavern, her reflection in a cloudy mirror.

  A laugh barked out before she could contain it. Her worry over being recognized were for naught. In her current state—disheveled hair, dirt- and tear-streaked face, desperate eyes—even her own clansfolk would be hard pressed to recognize her. She had spent years perfecting the royal image. The wool-and-trousers-clad-girl before them was anything but.

  Still, that did not mean she was in no danger. The clientele of the Black Dove looked to be a rough sort. She needed to discourage any unsavory attention. She needed to get in, find her father, and get out without drawing any more notice than she already had.

  Squaring her shoulders, she strode into the building with as much confidence and certainty as she could project. She cut a path toward the bar along the back wall, scanning her gaze side to side as she went. Cataloging face after face, looking for familiar features.

  For the first time, she doubted her seven-year-old’s memory of what her father looked like. It had been many years, and the only portrait of him in the palace had been painted long ago, when he was not much older than she was now. What if she did not recognize him?

  She would. She had to. Even without a recent image, she knew enough to narrow the field.

  She ruled out any men who were obviously too young or too old. Ruled out the ones with red, blond, or light brown hair. He could have been shorter than she remembered, but Drustan had always been lean, so she ignored any with a wide girth or massive muscles. And his eyes, the part of him she remembered most clearly, were a crystalline blue. Which meant any with green, brown, or otherwise not-blue eyes were also out.

  Which left her with precisely zero likely candidates.

  Her stomach sank. He was not there.

  Arianne reached the bar and climbed onto a stool. Her father was most certainly not in this room. A staircase rose up the right-hand wall, probably leading to rooms of ill-repute on the second level. She did not relish the thought of venturing up there to search.

  The door behind the bar swung open on squeaking hinges.

  Arianne spun away from her study of the room, prepared to order a sweet-meade—equal parts procrastination and liquid courage. Her jaw dropped when she saw the barkeep.

  “Can I get you something to drink, miss?” he asked.

  She tried to form words, tried to get her jaw to do anything but hang there limp like a willow branch.

  “Hey,” the man—tall and lean, with dark hair, bright blue eyes, and skin the exact tawny shade of Arianne’s—cocked his head to the side, “are you okay?”

  Tears filled her eyes. She finally managed to draw in enough breath to whisper, “Daddy?”

  His eyes widened and he leaned back, arms raised in a defensive gesture. “Whoa, miss, I think you’re confusing me with someone else.”

  Was she wrong? The details all fit. He was the right age, had all the right features. And those eyes… Arianne would never forget the way his eyes would glow when he read her to sleep at night.

  No, there was no mistaking the man
before her was her father.

  Perhaps the madness taken his identity from him.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  He frowned. “Everyone calls me Keep.”

  She smiled tightly. “I mean your given name.”

  He picked up a glass and started wiping it with a thin cotton towel. “Couldn’t say.”

  “Why not?” Arianne pressed.

  He set the clean glass aside and started on another. “Can’t remember.”

  “Then how can you know that I’m not your daughter?”

  After setting the second glass beside the first, he said, “Wouldn’t I remember having a daughter?”

  Arianne’s heart cracked. He truly did not remember—not her, not Callie, not even himself. But she could see the ache in him, the longing that maybe he did not even understand. He might not remember his past, but he wanted to.

  She reached across the bar and wrapped her hand over his wrist.

  “I know who you are,” she whispered. “Come with me.”

  He looked at her for several long, painful seconds before saying, “Can’t leave during happy hour. This place will be bustling for the next four hours.”

  They didn’t have time for this.

  “This can’t wait,” she insisted.

  He started to respond, opened his mouth to tell her again why he couldn’t go. She didn’t give him the chance.

  “Now, Callie.”

  Arianne barely had time to register the stunned look on his face before the bright light flashed around them.

  Chapter 16

  The light faded and they were in the glade. Arianne still felt her father’s wrist held tightly in her grip. There was no possibility of letting go, not now that she’d found him after so long. Well, not now that Callie had found him.

  Her eyes recovered from the light, and Arianne saw Callie standing before her. Before them.

  Her sister looked hesitant. Worried. The same kind of terrified and thrilled Arianne had felt before entering the Black Dove. The same kind of desperate longing she had seen in Drustan’s unremembering eyes. A look that said they had been parted for far too long.

  “What just happened?” Drustan demanded, his voice gruff with confusion.

  “Father,” Callie exclaimed, and flung her arms around him. “I have missed you so.”

  The look of confusion in the long lost king’s eyes only deepened. Arianne winced as Drustan wrapped a hand around each of Callie’s forearms and pulled himself out of her embrace.

  “Will someone please tell me what the Everdark is going on?” he asked.

  Callie’s gaze flashed to Arianne’s.

  “He doesn’t remember?” Callie whispered.

  Arianne shook her head slowly. Her heart ached for the memory of him. For the decade of longing, hoping, waiting until he returned. For knowing that Callie had felt the same aching. And now that he was right before their eyes, finally, after all of these years, it was as if he wasn’t really there at all.

  Still, a shadow of her father was better than none. Arianne would take what she could get.

  Callie’s jaw tightened. “I can make him.”

  “Make me what?” Drustan demanded.

  “Is it safe?” Arianne asked her.

  Callie answered neither question. She lifted her hands to his temples and before he could so much as blink, a soft glow surround his head and he became quite still. It was as if he were instantly frozen in place—like the welcoming her sister had given Tearloch when he burst into the glade, but locked in thin air instead of ice.

  Where was Tearloch? She had not seen him since she returned.

  She glanced away to make sure he was still there, then smiled when she saw him at Callie’s hut, working to put some of the fallen boards back in place.

  When she turned back to her family—her family—they were still silent and unmoving. The glow around Drustan’s head had grown, expanded until it encompassed both father and daughter.

  “Callie?” Arianne asked, half in awe and half concerned.

  When they were children, Arianne had seen only glimpses of Callie’s unnatural power. Sweets appearing out of thin air. A rabbit made to talk. Dancing candles in their nursery.

  Nothing like this.

  This was true power. Unrestrained. Instinct urged Arianne to take a step back, to fear this unnatural power so at odds with her own, but she remained rooted to the spot. Forced herself to stand and watch.

  The pair seemed chiseled from stone, unmoving as Callie stared fiercely into their father’s eyes. As Drustan stared blankly back. Arianne felt like an intruder.

  After what felt like an eternity, he finally blinked.

  Callie lowered her hands.

  His brow crinkled in confusion, his eyes cloudy. Arianne held her breath. Waiting for some sign of the result. Had it worked? What if it hadn’t? What if it had, in fact, done more damage to his already faltering memory? What if?

  There was no point in asking that question now. They could only wait… and hope.

  Drustan looked first at Callie, then at Arianne, then back at Callie.

  A single tear fell from his eye.

  “Callistra?” he whispered, his voice rough and weak, as though he had been walking all those years through a desert. “Arianne?”

  Arianne wanted to cry with relief.

  “Father,” she gasped, and flung her arms around his waist.

  She felt Callie’s arms reach around him from the other side, engulfing Arianne in the same hug. Drustan’s arms came around their shoulders and Arianne wanted to sob with relief. In an instant, she was that little girl once more. Small and scared, but safe in her father’s embrace. She had the most wonderful feeling that, with their family reunited, everything would be all right.

  “My girls,” he said, almost like a prayer to Great Morrigan.

  Arianne could not say how long they stood their, simply holding each other.

  It was the sound of hammering that finally broke the joyful trance, the sound of whatever work Tearloch was doing to busy himself while the family reunited.

  Arianne smiled as she leaned back so she could see her father’s face without leaving the comfort of his embrace. “What do you remember?”

  The frown returned. “I re—“ He shook his head. “Until this moment, I remembered only the events of the last two years. I recall waking in the forest outside of the tavern. I had no memory of life before that moment. The proprietor said he did not recognize me, but offered me food and shelter if I served behind the bar.”

  “Two years?” Arianne whispered.

  He had been gone almost ten. No, ten exactly, as Callie had said.

  “And now?” Callie asked.

  “I remember you.” He squeezed his daughters closer still. “I remember my queen’s death, my overwhelming grief, and then my Callie’s disappearance.”

  Callie sobbed and burrowed tighter into their father’s neck.

  “I sought solace,” he recounted, “ventured to the queen’s grave to seek her advice. And then…”

  The pained look on his face brought new tears to Arianne’s eyes. She lifted her fingers to his cheeks and wiped them away.

  “I remember nothing else. Between my walk to the graveyard and my waking in the forest…” He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  There were eight years missing from his memory. Eight years that even Callie’s magic had not been able to uncover. Would they ever?

  “We will fix it,” Callie insisted, but her voice trembled as though she were not nearly so confident as she wished to be. “With time, I can focus my powers more specifically on the missing years.” She wiped at her nose. “You will remember.”

  Despite her sister’s own doubt, Arianne believed in her. Callie was nothing if not strong-willed. She could not have survived this long on her own otherwise.

  Arianne sensed a movement at her side, and turned to see Tearloch standing directly behind her. His face was carefully blank. Not expectant o
r impatient, but vaguely curious.

  He understood the enormity of the moment for her and he did not want to interfere.

  But she had to remember her obligations. She had not made this journey alone, and her goals were not the only pursuit. Still, she thought her sister deserved a little more time before the real world returned.

  Arianne turned back to her family, gave them one more tight squeeze, and then pulled herself out of the hug. She stepped away a few feet, just enough to give Callie and Drustan some space, and was pleased when Tearloch followed.

  “A happy family reunion?” he asked, his voice gentle.

  Arianne looked at him, unashamed of the happy tears filling her eyes.

  “I cannot believe he is real,” she said. “Is he really here?”

  Tearloch placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and she almost thought he held himself back from doing more.

  “Does he have answers for you?” he asked.

  “Very few. He remembers leaving the castle, to visit my mother’s grave, and then…” She shook her head. “He woke up in the forest with no memory of himself or anything before that moment.”

  “But your sister helped him,” Tearloch said. “He remembers now?”

  “Only until the time of his disappearance,” she explained. “But still nothing between leaving the castle and waking up in the forest. What could have happened?”

  Tearloch shrugged and gave her a rueful smile, clearly as much at a loss as she was.

  Arianne could imagine any number of terrible things, from an accident that resulted in his amnesia to a violent attack to some kind of magic. And still, what had happened during those missing years? Would they ever know?

  She shook her head, knowing that there were other priorities at the moment.

  For right now, she would just have to have faith that they would eventually learn the truth. For right now, she needed to ask Callie for the information Tearloch sought.

  With Tearloch at her side, she walked back over to her father and sister. Each beamed at her like she was the brightest star in the sky.

  Her returning smile must have been just as bright.